


Archange de la mort (rallume ton flambeau)

by jaldon



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Death, Grief/Mourning, heroes in crisis spoilers ig but i wrote this before it came out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 01:54:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16108334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaldon/pseuds/jaldon
Summary: It rains the day he finds out. That should be the first hint that the world has fallen apart, really, because here’s the thing: it always rains.





	Archange de la mort (rallume ton flambeau)

**Author's Note:**

> uhh heroes in crisis spoilers warning ig. i mean i wrote this before it came out but. i really hoped t*m k*ng would make me a clown.
> 
> oh also the title is from the third movement of Stravinsky's Persephone which you should absolutely listen to.

It rains the day he finds out. That should be the first hint that the world has fallen apart, really, because here’s the thing: it always rains.

The hot, thick rain of summer drenches Gotham’s streets the night that the tragedy known as Jason Todd is brought into the world in a dirty apartment. The newborn’s wails mix with the normal city sounds: sirens, screaming, faint gunshots. His mother, desperate for a smoke, leaves the crying infant in the arms of Catherine Todd. Then, she leaves for good.

_And;_

Freezing, near-sleet falls the day his mother dies. He’s chilled to the bone by the time he gets back to their home with a bag of stolen groceries tucked under his frayed red sweatshirt. It’s too quiet, and suddenly he’s afraid. When he finds her body, he falls to his knees and sobs so hard that it feels like his chest is being ripped out through his throat. In the corner, the leak in their ceiling drips.

_And;_

It rains the day Bruce benches him for the last time. It rains all the way into Gotham, and all the way back. He sits on his bed in the manor, a box of his parents’ belongings clutched in between his hands. When he opens it, when he finds the birth certificate that does not say Catherine, his heart beats rapidly. _Bruce may not love me anymore,_ he thinks, _but this woman will. This woman has to._

_And;_

The cemetery is still as the dead sleep in their graves. The only sounds are the wind, the chilly rain, the low rumble of thunder and the occasional crackle of lightning. A boy’s hand pushes through the earth, and then the rest of his body. He screams, agony tearing through his too-small form, and his blood and sweat and tears mix with the pouring rain.

_And;_

He always pushes too far, asks for too much, commits too quickly. He wears his heart on his sleeve, practically begging for it to be used against him. And yet, when it is, he’s still surprised. He has two fresh scars: one on his heart, and one on his throat. As he presses a gloved arm to his neck and stumbles to his nearest safehouse, the clouds explode. Rain drips into gutters the the tears making their way down his cheeks.

He shouldn’t be surprised when he finds out, because here’s the thing: it always rains.

-

Jason is standing at his kitchen table, his attention on the variety of maps and profiles for the underlife case, when his phone rings. Upon seeing who it is, he smiles and answers it. “Hey, Roy.”

From the other end of the line comes the sound of breath hitching, followed by a heavy silence. In the background- is someone _crying_? His heart begins to speed up. Something is wrong.

“Roy?” Jason says. “You okay, buddy?”

There’s more silence, settling like a blanket, and finally a female voice speaks. “Jason,” she says quietly. She breathes. “Where are you right now?”

“Dinah?” He replies, because this is all wrong. Why does Dinah have Roy’s phone, and, “What’s going on?”

“Jason,” she says, her tone gentler than he’s been spoken to by anyone in a long time. “I want you to… I want you to sit down for this.” And suddenly the puzzle clicks into place. _No._

“Stop talking,” he says, probably harsher than she deserves. He pushes himself away from the table.

“There was an attack-” she starts.

“No.” He stumbles for the door, trying to escape to… _somewhere_. (He’s always been a runner. It’s never worked out for him. Not when he was fifteen and desperate for family, not when he was nineteen and utterly betrayed, and not now.)

“-on the Sanctuary-”

“No,” he says again, somehow forcing himself up the stairs. He can barely breathe; something has wrapped itself around his chest and refuses to let go.

“-and I’m sorry to tell you that-” she continues, and her voice finally breaks.

“Dinah, please,” he begs, bursting out onto the roof. _Please don’t tell me, because what I don’t know can’t hurt me. Please don’t tell me, because I can’t bear to know. Please don’t tell me, because if you say it that means that it’s real_.

“-that Roy didn’t make it,” she finishes.

He falls to his knees and retches, his stomach emptying its contents. A wretched sob tears through his body, and he doubles over. This is not just a broken heart, no. This is a broken everything, his body and soul shredded into pieces too tiny to even consider salvaging.

(Take a knife to Roy Harper’s neck and Jason Todd will feel the wound. That’s how it’s always been, with them.)

“I want you to know that you were his emergency contact,” Dinah says, crying too now. “The first one. You mean- you meant the world to him.” She breathes. “He loved you so much.” And Jason can’t help but shake as tears run down his cheeks, fast and thick as blood, because what is sadder than love in the past tense?

He doesn’t know when Dinah hangs up, just that eventually he’s alone, sobbing, soaked by the pouring rain.

(Because he knows this feeling well: angry, sad, afraid. Head hanging because he no longer has the will to hold it up, face shining with a mask of tears. The killing blow dealt, his own bloody hands pressing on his stomach, holding his guts in place. Half a second away from death, and not alive enough to care.)

-

He doesn’t go to the funeral, because above all else, he is still Bruce’s enemy, and the bats are in attendance. Because if he showed up, Bruce would probably interrupt the eulogy he was giving to put him in a pair of cuffs. Jason doesn’t think he could bear to be there, among all those people pretending to have loved him, anyways.

Instead, he sits at the flower-covered grave alone two days later. _Roy William Harper, Jr_ , it reads, _Friend, Son, Hero._

“You dumb fucking bastard,” he says, “It should have been me.”

This is wrong, all wrong, and he reaches out to touch the letters on the slab of stone. The dam breaks, because this is what he gets. This is real. This is final. “I hate you,” he sobs, and his tears drip into the earth, finding their way towards his beloved. “I hate you, it should have been me.”

Because if it was him, if he finally got what he deserved, at least he wouldn’t be alone.

Because there was no one who deserved life more than Roy Harper.

He presses his forehead to the cold stone of Roy’s grave, and a memory of doing the same thing with the real person tugs at him. “I’m sorry, Roy. I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” a voice behind him says. Jason turns to see Kate Kane looking down at him sadly. “This isn’t your fault.”

“It is,” he replies. It occurs to him to wonder what she’s doing here. Did Bruce send her? But then he remembers that she’s fallen out of the Bat’s good graces as well.

“Jason,” she says, kneeling down next to him, “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. I know what you’re feeling. Losing a partner is...” Kate trails off, looking away, her green eyes glistening with tears unshed.

So she knows, then, or guessed.

“I don’t think I can do it again,” he says. “Not without him.” To her credit, she doesn’t say anything, offer any well-intentioned but fake consolatory words. She just pulls him into a tight hug, and they sit in silence.

“Kate, he-” Jason starts, and has to stop, because he can’t get the words out. “He asked me to go with him, and I didn’t. I just let him leave.” He thinks about the last time he saw Roy, standing in the sunset. He doesn’t even remember the last words they said to each other. “If I was there, he might not have-”

They sit there for a while, Kate holding his shaking body, Jason sobbing into her jacket.

After a while- minutes? hours?- she speaks. “Jason, if there’s anything I can do for you…”

He thinks of the promise he made Roy shortly before he went to the sanctuary, the files spread out on his kitchen table. Just one last thing, for Roy, and then he can finally be done. One last thing, and he can finally rest. Nothing matters but this.

(This is the worst part, maybe: it doesn’t rain. The universe has the gall to mock him after everything that happens. The light of his life is dead, and there’s no shower to drench him.

Because here’s the thing: it always rains.)

-

They finish the Underlife case in a couple of weeks, and if Jason is more violent than he has to be, Kate pretends not to notice.

He feels her eyes on him one day once the case is closed. He’s busy stitching up a hole in his side.

“I’m fine,” he says, trying to stop the questions before they come.He ties off the knot at the end. It’s neat, despite how shaky his hands have been.

“No,” she says, “you’re not.”

“It doesn’t matter, anyways.” The case is over. Roy’s last wish is completed. And Roy is still dead. He leaves.

-

He goes back to Gotham, because even though he promised himself he’d be done, there’s one more thing he has to do. Once he’s gone, the people of Gotham won’t have anyone to protect them. As much as Batman likes to pretend, he doesn’t care about the people, not really.

Bruce might have sworn to protect the city, but Jason is Gotham, born and raised. He’s finely attuned to the city, knows where to hear all of its secrets. And at the heart of it all, he knows the people. Loves them.

He can’t protect them all, and he knows it, but he can eliminate the biggest threat.

Jason breaks into Arkham Asylum and doesn’t waste any time before unceremoniously putting a bullet in between the Joker's eyes.

This is the man- the thing- that destroyed him, that put him in the ground when he was fifteen years old. This is the man who has killed countless hundreds, and still Batman has barely raised a finger against him. This is man who symbolizes evil for evil’s sake.

Jason feels no guilt, only a faint twinge in the bottom of his stomach, a sense of sick satisfaction. It tastes something like victory, but it isn’t sweet.

Somehow, the Joker dies smiling.

Jason knows he can die now, too.

-

Batman chases Jason through the city later that night, as soon as he finds out what he’s done. They come to a stop on a rooftop, eerily similar to their fight just a few weeks before. Jason stands on the ledge, not sure which way he’s going to step if it comes down to it.

“I told you to stay out of my city,” Batman yells.

After all this time, he still believes it’s his. Bruce always wanted to belong. He forced himself into it, forced the city to belong to him, and it still only fit like a puzzle piece shoved into the wrong place by a petulant child.

“Why are you doing this, Hood?” He says.

Something tight in Jason’s chest explodes. “He killed thousands of people, Batman. I got rid of your biggest enemy, free of charge. How aren’t you happy?”

“We don’t kill,” Batman says.

“You let them die!” Jason screams, and tears suddenly start streaming down his face under the helmet. “You let them die like their lives don’t mean a damn thing! You were supposed to protect them! HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SAFE THERE!” And there it is, because it’s not just about _them_ anymore.

It’s about _him_ , always _him_ , forever _him_ . Because _he_ was the last thing Jason had, the last thing to live for. And now _he_ is just a memory.

(There’s a million memories, a million fragments that have a dreamlike edge now: Roy drawing his bow, his face tight with concentration; Roy pulling his hair back into a ponytail on a hot July day; Roy burning toast so that Jason would make him breakfast (he would have anyways, he always would have); Roy’s eyes softening as he traces the line of Jason’s jaw, finally pulling him in for a kiss; Roy, Roy, Roy.)

This is what they, Bruce and the rest of his godly trinity, have taken from him.

He knows that there’s going to be no Roy this time, no one to pull his limp body to his feet and make him whole again. He doesn’t care.

“I hate you,” he says. “You let him die. You killed him. I _hate_ you.” And he’s never felt it more.

Across the rooftop, Bruce tenses. Jason’s words have hit him, somehow. He hopes it hurts.

“I won’t let you kill in my city,” Batman growls. Jason’s vision flashes green.

This is what it has come down to. This is what it was always going to come down to.

It makes sense: Bruce took everything from him, so he will be the one to take Jason’s tragedy of a second life, too.

“Do your worst, then,” he says. “Throw me in Arkham. Kill me. I don’t care anymore.” He drops the gun he’s holding, the one that killed the Joker, onto the roof between them. Then he reaches up to take his helmet off so Bruce will at least have to look him in the eyes while he does it.

There’s a crack of thunder and the skies open up. _It always rains_. Batman starts forward, and Jason doesn’t move.

Something lands on the roof between them from God knows where, blocking Bruce’s path. _Batwoman_.

“Stand down, Batman,” she says to him. To him, without even looking, she says, “Go.”

-

She finds him later, lying on the floor in an empty warehouse at the Gotham waterfront. He doesn’t ask how she found him, what happened after he left.

“Jason,” she says, pulling off her cowl so he can see her face.

“Kate,” he replies numbly.

“You need help.”

“I don’t want it.”

She sits down next to him on the ground and pulls him so he’s sitting up, leaning on her. She runs her hand through his hair.

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” he says. He can’t see her, he can’t see anything, really. It’s all blurry.

“Maybe it’s time to leave Gotham,” she says slowly. “Not for good. But you need to find something new to live for. Something new to love.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” she says. “It won’t be easy, but- Jason, I’ve never met someone more resilient than you.”

He’s silent.

“This is a choice you have to make for yourself, Jason,” she says. She stands up and pulls him with her. “I’m sorry.” She pulls him into a hug.

He thinks about what she said after she’s gone. There’s a rip in his heart now, one he doesn’t think will ever be fixed. His body is riddled with the bullet holes of love had and lost.

He takes off his helmet and sets the self destruct mechanism. Places it on the warehouse floor. Leaves the warehouse. In the glow of the moon, he sits on the dock and feels the heat of the warehouse as it explodes against his back. He doesn’t even flinch. Then, he steals a boat.

He doesn’t look back once.

Red Hood is dead. Jaybird is dead. Jason Todd is dead.

But maybe, just maybe, Jason lives.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading im really sorry im just. you know. writing 2 cope. im gonna try to write a fix it or something im working on a fun au so. 
> 
> please leave kudos/comments if you can! ty!!
> 
> find me on tumblr [here](https://wusans.tumblr.com/)


End file.
